by B. J Daniels
* * *
CASH FOUND Dr. and Mrs. Porter Ivers in the master bedroom. Like all the other rooms, this one was spotlessly neat. The window next to the bed was open, the curtains billowing on the night breeze, the air fresh after the rainstorm.
Dr. Porter Ivers lay on the bed, his wife Emily in his arms, the two locked in an embrace.
Cash didn’t need to check their pulses to know that they were both dead, but he did before he picked up the phone beside the bed to call Coroner Raymond Winters.
Beside the phone was an empty bottle of pills. Next to it was a glass half full of water. Propped against the night side lamp were two envelopes—one with the words Sheriff Cash McCall written on it, the other with simply Taylor.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Anna spent the night in the guest bedroom at the Sundown Ranch. Dusty brought her a white cotton nightgown.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” the youngest McCall said as she gently laid the nightgown on the end of the guest bed, smoothing the fabric with her fingers. “I didn’t have a mother, either.” She turned and looked at Anna. “Well, until recently,” she said with an eye roll.
“It’s tough growing up without a mother,” Anna agreed. “But you have one now.”
Dusty shrugged. “Just like you have your father now. Aren’t you mad at him, though, for what he did?”
Anna nodded and sat down on the edge of the bed, moving the nightgown so Dusty could join her. “I am angry. Part of the reason is that he lied to me for so long and I still don’t know the truth.”
“Yeah,” Dusty said, then lowered her voice conspiratorially. “My parents told us why they did what they did to protect us. But we all know there’s more. Like why she came back now, you know?”
Anna nodded.
“And how can I tell if they are telling me the truth now after they lied to me my whole life?” Dusty asked, sounding miserable.
“I guess all we can do is start somewhere. I want to know my father. I know there is good in him now. And he’s family. You’re lucky to have such a large family.”
“But it sounds like you might have a sister,” Dusty said.
Anna nodded, wondering how Taylor would take all of this. She hated to think. “I just know I don’t want to waste any more time hating my father.”
Dusty nodded and let out a long sigh. “It’s just been so embarrassing, everyone in town talking about us.” She mugged a face, then brightened. “But I guess they’ll be talking about your family now.” She caught herself, her eyes widening in horror. “Oh, I didn’t mean—”
Anna laughed. “It’s all right. If it takes away from people gossiping about your family, then something good has come out of it.” Until the town got wind that Christianna VanHorn was with Brandon McCall. Even temporarily.
* * *
BRANDON COULDN’T sleep. He checked on Anna. She was tucked into the guest bedroom, asleep, breathing softly, reminding him of the nights they’d spent together; his sleepless one in the mountains and the amazing one at the lake cabin.
“I need to check on Cash,” he told his mother.
“Would you keep an eye—”
“On Anna? Of course.” She seemed to study his face.
“How serious is this, Brandon?”
He took a breath and let it out slowly. “On my part? Or hers?”
His mother nodded as if the answer was only too clear and patted his arm. “Go check on your brother.”
He looked at her, seeing how beautiful she was now, thinking how pretty she must have been when she was even younger than Dusty.
“In high school,” he began, “when Dad and VanHorn were both in love with you…” He swallowed.
“Was I in love with Mason?” she asked.
He nodded.
She smiled and seemed to choose her words carefully. “It was always Asa. Always. But if there hadn’t been an Asa…” She sighed and met his gaze.
He let out the breath he’d been holding. “All right.” He backed toward the door. “Thank you for tonight.”
“She’s a beautiful, smart, capable young woman,” Shelby said.
“Yeah, she is that.”
* * *
ALL THE LIGHTS were on inside the sheriff’s department. Brandon parked out front next to several state patrol cars. Several men were leaving as he walked in. Cash stood behind his desk, his back to the room.
“Did you get Ivers?” he asked.
Cash turned and nodded slowly.
Brandon could see by his face that something horrible had happened.
“He and Emily were dead when I got there,” Cash said. “He left a confession.”
“Does it clear Mason?” Brandon asked hopefully, thinking of Anna.
Cash nodded. “How are you?”
“Fine. Mason came out of surgery. Anna’s out at the ranch.”
“The Sundown?” he asked in surprise. “Asa must be beside himself.”
“He took it pretty well,” Brandon said. “But I don’t think he’d be wild about having a VanHorn for a daughter-in-law.”
“Not that it matters what he wants. Is that something he should be worried about?”
“Anna and I…” He waved a hand through the air.
“She thinks she wants to live on the home ranch. I think she won’t last a month before she’s ready for the city and her life back there.”
“So it’s like that,” Cash said.
“Truthfully?” Brandon asked as he straddled a chair across from his brother’s desk. “I don’t know what it’s like right now. So much has happened. I guess only time will tell.”
“Have you told her you love her?” Cash asked as he pulled out his chair and sat down.
Brandon looked up at him in surprise.
“It’s a place to start, little brother,” Cash said with a smile. “Now, tell me what the hell’s been going on.”
Brandon started at the beginning with his job as night security on the VanHorn Ranch. Cash only interrupted a few times, usually just to swear or say, “What the hell were you thinking?”
From the job to the vandal to meeting Anna to finding out who she was and why she was in Montana, Brandon told him everything, including why Asa and Mason hated each other in the continuing feud of the McCalls and VanHorns.
“Mother?”
Brandon smiled and nodded. “She said if there hadn’t been an Asa…” He told him about Anna’s nanny and the deathbed confession, up until the part where Cash walked into Brookside.
“The nanny thought it had been Dr. French who delivered the babies and took Helena to Brookside,” Brandon said. “The two were built the same, even about the same age, and Dr. Ivers said he used Dr. French’s name when it suited him.”
The phone rang. Cash answered it. “That was the hospital,” he said after he hung up. “I can talk to Mason now. I still want a statement from you and Anna.” He glanced at his watch. “Can the two of you stop by in the morning?”
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, Anna left Brandon outside her father’s hospital room while she went in.
Mason looked up, obviously surprised to see her. She went to him and planted a kiss on his weathered cheek. A tear rolled down. She brushed it away.
“I thought you would be gone back to Richmond,” he said quietly. “I thought you would never want to see me again.”
She pulled up a chair and sat down, taking his hand in both of hers. “I need to know the truth,” she said, meeting his gaze. “No more lies.”
He nodded and repeated the story he’d told her. “Ivers let me believe your mother killed that little baby.”
“So you took it out to bury it,” she said. “You didn’t know she was having twins?”
He shook his head and looked down. “But when I came back in Ivers had called Niles French. French pulled me aside, I guess, so I didn’t see Ivers leave. He was carrying something in his arms. I heard it cry. I knew there had been another baby….” He broke down for a moment. “G
od forgive me, but I didn’t want that baby. Not a baby your mother had with another man, and I knew she wasn’t able to take care of the two children we already had.”
“So you knew Taylor was my sister?” Anna asked.
“No, I had no idea. I should have seen the resemblance, but Ivers let everyone believe his wife had been pregnant and had the baby early while staying at her sister’s. Since the baby was a fraternal twin, it would have been premature.”
Anna thought about her sister for a moment. “Dr. French took my mother to Brookside that night?”
He nodded. “I visited her every week. She didn’t know who I was and sometimes she wouldn’t even look at me, but I would talk to her and take pictures of you and Holt.” Mason stopped, cleared this throat. “She was getting better….” Tears filled his eyes. “I adored your mother but she was always fragile.”
“Cash says she was murdered in her room, 9B,” Anna told him.
“Dr. French told me she was killed by another patient. He covered it all up, saying she was a Jane Doe he’d picked up off the highway and put in Brookside for the night. I still visit her grave and put flowers on it. Oh, Anna, I’m so sorry. I was a coward. If I’d only told the truth from the start….”
She squeezed his hand. “Did you kill Dr. French?”
His face hardened. “I realize now that Ivers killed your mother. She was getting better. She might have remembered the twins being born, she might have asked about the daughter who had lived.”
Taylor. “His world was crumbling, his wife dying, me digging in the past,” Anna said.
“He would have done anything to protect his daughter,” Mason said. “I can understand that.” He swallowed.
“Your mother, in the days before she died, would look at the pictures I took her.” He smiled through his tears.
“She would touch the one of you and say how beautiful you were.”
“I look like her.”
He nodded. “I realize now it was the reason I pushed you away. I was afraid that I’d made Helena the way she was. I feared…” He lowered his head, broke down.
She stood, leaning over him to press her lips into his hair. “I’m so sorry for all the horrible things I thought about you.”
He wiped at his tears. “I am a hard man. Helena was the part of me that was soft and gentle. When I lost her…”
“Cash says you will probably get probation.”
“I’m not worried about me.” He drew back to look at her. “What will you do now?”
“I want to stay here.” She met his gaze.
“McCall.” He said it softly, then chuckled. “I guess I knew that day I saw the two of you sitting on that curb on Main Street. I thought if I sent you away…” He shook his head. “I thought the ranch and me made your mother sick. I wanted to free you from all of it. I guess it’s always been your destiny.”
“I hope so,” Anna said.
* * *
BRANDON PUSHED OFF the wall where he’d been pacing back and forth as Anna came out of her father’s room. There were tears in her eyes. “Is he all right?”
She nodded and bit her lower lip as Brandon reached for her. She came into his arms and he encircled her, burying his face in her dark hair. She smelled like sunshine and rain and summer. He thought about what Cash had said. But this wasn’t the place where he wanted to tell her he loved her.
The idea of telling her frightened him more than he wanted to admit. But he knew he had to do it, no matter the outcome. He couldn’t let her leave Montana without knowing how he felt.
“I told Cash we’d stop by his office and give him our statements,” he said.
She nodded against his chest, then pushed back, drying her eyes and taking a deep breath. She let it out slowly. “I’m ready.”
* * *
CASH WAS on the phone in his office. They waited until he hung up to take the chairs he offered them.
“That was Lenore on the phone. She can’t wait to get back to Richmond. She says she’ll call you,” Cash told Anna.
“I feel bad about what I put her through,” Anna said.
“It comes with being a P.I. I’m sure she told you that.” Cash leaned forward, turned on the tape recorder and took their statements. When they’d finished, he turned off the tape recorder and nodded. “Your stories fit what Dr. Ivers left in his confession and what Mason VanHorn told me.”
“Have you talked to Taylor?” Anna asked. “Is she all right?”
Cash nodded. “According to Taylor, her father had been planning to take his wife’s life and his own. That’s why she came back to Antelope Flats.”
“But she just learned that her father was a murderer,” Anna said.
“No,” Cash corrected her, “Taylor just learned that her father was Mason VanHorn.”
Anna stared at the sheriff. “But my father said—”
“Your father was wrong. Taylor had suspected for some time that she wasn’t Porter and Emily’s biological daughter. It didn’t add up. Mason was in the clinic a few months ago for a checkup. He showed both senior and junior Dr. Ivers a photograph of you, Anna. Taylor saw the resemblance—and the way her father reacted. She took some DNA when she did your father’s checkup.”
Anna was flabbergasted. “So my mother hadn’t had an affair. But my father believed—”
“Your mother was very sick. I think Dr. Ivers knew the truth,” Cash said. “That’s why he was so afraid when a private investigator showed up asking a lot of questions. The night security woman saw Dr. Ivers and Josh Davidson bring Lenore into Brookside; she didn’t know Ivers’s real name. He’d told her it was French. But after she’d seen him lock Lenore in 9B… It wasn’t her night to work. The other security watchman became suspicious when Davidson asked him a lot of questions about when he would be working and asked Emma Ingles to fill in for him. He later quit and left town. But it cost Emma her life.”
Brandon reached over and took Anna’s hand. “But you think Mason will get off with probation?”
“Probably,” Cash said. “He and Dr. French did cover up your mother’s death and your little brother’s, as well as keep her stay at Brookside a secret. But the real crimes were committed by Dr. Ivers.”
“Ivers killed Dr. French?” Brandon asked.
Cash nodded. “French wanted to come clean. He had been trying to get Helena’s file from your father, Anna. He needed it to prove what had really happened. I guess he had cancer and wanted to confess all before he died.”
“And Dr. Ivers couldn’t let him,” Brandon said.
“Why did he just keep Lenore at Brookside and not get rid of her permanently?”
“Ultimately, Ivers was buying as much time as he could with his wife. I don’t think he wanted to kill anyone.” Cash leaned forward, putting his arms on the desk.
“You might as well hear this from me. It will soon be common knowledge in Antelope Flats the way the gossip mill works here. Taylor wasn’t the only baby Ivers took. You remember the Arnolds, Brandon?”
“Leticia’s mom and dad?” Leticia was his sister Dusty’s best friend.
“They wanted a baby desperately. I guess Leticia’s mom was an unwed teenager,” Cash said. “There are other babies Ivers stole. We’re not sure how many.”
“Does Leticia know?” Brandon asked.
Cash shook his head. “She doesn’t know yet. It’s one of the things I have to do before the day is over. Are you all right, Anna?”
She nodded, surprised that she was.
“Taylor says she’ll stay in Antelope Flats and take over the clinic,” Cash said. “I think in time she’ll be glad she has a sister.”
“Maybe someday,” Anna said. “Right now, maybe I can just be a friend. She’s going to need someone.”
“That day at the clinic,” Brandon said. “I saw her frowning as we left. I thought she was frowning at me, but she knew then that you were her sister.”
Anna nodded. “I remember while she was checking my injury that she
kept staring at me. Funny, but I did notice her eyes and thought how much they were like mine.”
The phone rang. Cash answered, “Sure. Okay. All right.” He hung up and looked at Anna and Brandon. “That was Shelby. She has called a family dinner. Tonight. Everyone is to be there.” He raised a brow. “Who knows what’s up now? But she said you’re to bring Anna.”
* * *
BRANDON DROVE Anna out to the lake to get her things. She was quiet on the drive. As they started up the steps of the cabin, he stopped her.
“Let’s take a walk down by the lake first,” he said, not wanting to see her pack her bags. Not yet, anyway.
She looked a little surprised, but agreed.
The lake was glass, the morning sun golden in a cloudless blue sky. The air smelled of pine and water and summer. He breathed it in, reminded of the summers he’d spent on the lake with his dad and brothers—and eventually his little sister. This was where he wanted his children to be raised. This was home—this valley, this life.
As he walked with Anna along the sandy beach, he realized that not long ago he’d wanted to escape it. To go to law school, knowing he probably wouldn’t be back.
How could things have changed so much for him in a few days? He knew the answer. He’d never been in love before, didn’t realize what a strong pull it exerted over him. Now he wanted to make new roots, to build a family, to make a life for himself here.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” he said and stopped to take both of her hands in his. He looked into her dark eyes, startled at how beautiful she was. “I love you.”
The words were out so quickly, he surprised himself. He chuckled. “I had intended to say it more eloquently than that.”
“Oh, I thought that was wonderfully eloquent,” she said, her gaze locked with his.
He let go of her hands to pull off his Stetson and rake a hand through his hair. “I know this is sudden.”
She laughed. “Sudden? You call twenty-two years sudden?” She cupped his face in her hands. “I fell for you that day on the curb, Brandon McCall. Do you know my father saw us together? It’s another reason he sent me away. He was afraid I’d end up a ranchwoman.”
